Friday, June 8, 2007

Hospitals are kind of like washing machines. Everyone goes through the cycle sometime, some less frequent than others, all in hopes of coming out clean. Some are a quick in-and-out job, just a spin and dry cycle. Some get the whole works, the bleaching, the rinsing, the fabric softener. Some come out looking different than when they went in. A bleach mark here, a stretch mark there. And some of them get lost in the machine, never really making it out.
I wish it were as simple as that...but human lives are never really simple. There are too many factors to consider, many of them non-tangible. Psychological. Social. Spiritual. On this last day of internship at the Royal Vic, I reflect on the past six weeks with a fair amount of nostalgia because, even though losing patients has been hard, making a life-changing impact on a person's life resounds deeply within the human heart. Everything happens in hospitals. The mundane, the funny, the crazy, where people "get hearts" and "change kidneys"; birth, life, death. Some things take a long time to happen. Some things happen within the time it takes to blink an eye. I'm glad that I've confirmed my calling to myself. This is where I want to be.

Cute ER intern brought me coffee this morning. I never gave him my phone number.


Summer
begins
now.